Welcome to episode 199. Well what an amazing response we had to last weeks debate with John Nemo about LinkedIn automation! One of the key points that came out of episode 197 is that myself and John have very different ways of generating business and many of you wanted to know more about my way of using LinkedIn to generate 95% of my business without the need to play the numbers game. So that is going to be the main theme of this episode. But first…..

Interesting Stuff I Saw This Week

Introducing Salary Insights on Jobs

LinkedInfluence

I received this question prior to last weeks episode and I thunk it hits on a really important question

I enjoy John’s (Nemo) podcasts too and find them to be useful. He also believes in providing value which aligns well with your strategy and what I believe in. That said, on the providing value yet pushy scale, John is totally different from you which is why I appreciate your style a lot more.

The question for you though is how does one avoid being pushy like John, provides value like you both do, but also builds a solid bridge to the services that are provided by you and/or your organization.

For example I have now downloaded and heard at least 20+ of your past episodes. I love them! I love your style. However I am not sure what you do besides some LinkedIn workshops which you have very briefly mentioned on your podcast. Of course I know I can go on your web site and find out, but isn’t that a lost opportunity? If I run into someone tomorrow that needs services you can provide but I don’t know about them, wouldn’t that be a loss for you?

The reason I ask is that I have also approached my networking in person with the same mentality. I have for years provided lots of value to people in the business community here in Washington DC. They love me and the relationships are strong. But I am not sure most would know what opportunities to pass on to me.

Of course that’s why I am getting more active on LinkedIn and working on content generation but also find somethings John talks about to be appealing. Eg automating messages to contacts...which add value and lead them to more ‘sales’ options.

Anyway, just a thought about balance on the spectrum of ‘pushy ness’ and how you build an effective bridge to sales for people that see you as a credible resource

So I thought it would be a good idea to go through my recommended approach to winning business on LinkedIn. Some aspects of this are not related to LinkedIn but nonetheless, very important

Define your product or service and it’s target audience (customer avatar) Focus this down to something very specific - the more niche the better. Be brave - don’t worry your market will be too limited, the more niche, the better. Your most effective marketing tool is the quality of what you do. Spend time and money on; Personal development and training The best quality equipment Practice hard and perfect your product Innovate. Make your product unique in your market Put together a clear and thorough content strategy (not just limited to LinkedIn) Video Written Audio Images Get active on LinkedIn in the following areas; Topics - define five key topics that are relevant and interesting to your customer avatar. Search for people who are though leaders and experts in each of these five topics. Follow and in time, connect with them. Search for content in each of these five topic areas and follow anyone who is posting about these topics Engage. Like and comment on posts from 2 & 3 above. Jump right in and get involved. This will raise your visibility in relevant communities. Post. The aim of posting is to draw people into commenting - this is where the magic happens! Posts that resonate are often light natured (see image below).

Go deeper. As you engage with relevant people (not just potential customers) selectively take it to the next level by suggesting meeting for a coffee or via a Skype/Zoom call.

Your aim is to become well known as; Knowledgeable in your niche subject Interesting and thought provoking Helpful and generous

Welcome to episode 198, this week I have a real treat for you! As I have mentioned previously, I wanted to revisit the controversial subject of LinkedIn automation. LinkedIn make it very clear they do not approve of the use of any type of automation bot as you can see in the image above which was received by someone after visiting just 100 profiles in a day…..but does that mean we should avoid them? Could they be a useful tool that help us become more productive and successful?

I have thought about this a lot and my conclusion is that automation tools are a bad thing for all of us and the more they are used, the less effective LinkedIn will become.

Darrel Griffin agrees

But not everyone sees it that way…..enter John Nemo!

John is a LinkedIn trainer and a big fan of automation on LinkedIn so I thought it would be fun to get him on the show and have a good old debate!

We get into all sorts of areas during our discussion and I’m not going to even attempt to cover everything here, you will have to listen to the episode but in short;

John believes In Permission Based Marketing. Contact people via direct message and ask them if they are interested. If they say “No thanks” then that is fine, move on. Most people are not active on LinkedIn so direct messaging has to be a numbers game. Automated of connecting and messaging saves you time and acts as a filter - eliminating those that are not active or not interested. In not wasting time with ‘Tyre (tire) kicking people, it’s better to focus on those that are likely to buy. If LinkedIn is ruined by automation then so be it, people will move to another platform and we can follow them there. Quote “Marketers ruin everything” - Gary Vaynerchuck Whilst LinkedIn are not supportive of 3rd party tools, they are mainly against scraping tools, not automation.

I believe Visibility, reputation and relationships are the key to winning business. By putting your time an effort into engagement on LinkedIn via Posts, Articles and comments (not direct messaging) you also filter out those that are not active on LinkedIn When you play the numbers game you are likely to put many more people off than you attract, this is damaging to you in the long term although may be more rewarding in the short term. I will help anyone, including so called ‘tyre kicker’s because I believe that ‘giving’ in this way will gain me more visibility and build better relationships - this strategy means that 95% of my business comes to me and I do very little traditional ‘business development’. Automation is a numbers game, for every 5 positive responses there are 95 negative, not all of these will be annoyed and very few will actually complain but a decent percentage of these become tired of being ‘hit on’ - no matter how politely it is done. LinkedIn has become an amazing business resource but automation will ruin it because these tools will be extensively used by people who misuse hem and this will result in the people we wish to do business with, switching off or even closing their accounts. We can’t afford to let LinkedIn deteriorate in this way. Using automation tools is highly risky, the chances of getting your account suspended are increasing all the time. LinkedIn are very keen to stop the use of automation tools, not just scraping tools.

John referred to an article he wrote about his method which you can read here;

Someone alerted me to a shocking issue regarding invitations to connect this week and it got me thinking about the ineffective way that LinkedIn introduce new features. It seems that introduce features on a slow roll-out and rely on their users to report issues…..but what if we don’t or aren’t able to spot a problem…….based on the evidence of this week, it appears that such issues just remain until someone does report it. …..and that is simply not good enough!

More of that later but as usual I scanned the internet to find any interesting articles about Linkedin, I found a few but it has been noticeable this year that LinkedIn’s own blog seems to be focussed mainly on job seekers - very few LinkedIn users are looking for jobs so why are Linkedin writing virtually all their blog articles for jobseekers? So far this year on LinkedIn’s main blog 9/10 (and the last 9) have been jobseeker focused!

Interesting Stuff I Saw This Week

People Still Spend an Insane Amount of Time on Facebook, But Trust it Much Less than LinkedIn Results from a report released by Business Insider I’m not sure how people it interpret ‘Safe to participate or post’ but LinkedIn was by far the most trusted with 48% of the votes (Facebook was 2nd with 24%). LinkedIn is clearly seen as more reliable for ‘real’ content and a place where you will get less abuse This is good news for LinkedIn ads Six Ways Millennials Can Take LinkedIn To The Next Level Interesting article, not just relevant to millennials Number 1 is ‘Make it fun’ - this is such good advice. Yuck! to CV style profiles! Activity (inc post searching) is great advice Number 6 (stop being cheap) is unrealistic and unnecessary for most Remember LinkedIn? A year on from the $27bn Microsoft takeover - was it worth it? Very little has changed on LinkedIn - as they said would be the case at the time of the takeover! LinkedIns revenue is growing ($1.3bn in the quarter) Microsoft say that LinkedIn is “performing better than we expected, and I think today we would even say it's a more strategic asset than we even maybe thought a year ago.”

#LinkedInLocal

I will be attending three Linkedin local events in the next month or so; Aberdeen 22nd February Manchester 14th March Warrington 15th March (this has changed from the 8th as stated in the show)

The #LinkedInLocal concept is really taking off with an amazing 48 events happening in February and March across the world including Bristol, Leeds, San Francisco, Paris, Las Vegas, Edinburgh and Lahore to name a few

To find an event in your area go to https://linkedlocally.com/explore/

Post of the Week

A great video post from José Chávez-Ruz that hits the mark for being relevant, interesting and highly shareable.

New Feature

LinkedIn are improving the skills endorsements feature (mobile only at the moment).

Now when you endorse a skill you are asked to grade the level

And then give it some context

In addition you can now see the actual number of endorsements on mobile, rather than the previous 99+

Will this make skill endorsements relevant? I very much doubt it - too little too late, endorsements are not taken seriously because previously they were too easy to give. Adding the extra steps to endorse does make them more credible but you can’t separate the new ones from the old ones! I personally think this is a tactic to stop those ridiculous ‘Auto-endorse’ bots that are becoming popular…….more of that subject next week when I will be debating LinkedIn automation with John Nemo. If you have any thoughts or questions about automation, please get in touch as soon as possible.

Your Personalised mobile invitations have not been sent!

I was truly shocked to find this out this week - thanks to an eagle eyed connection who spotted it. For years I have been encouraging people to personalise their invitations to connect on mobile by using the 3 dot ‘More’ menu rather than the blue Connect button. It would appear that this invitation (the actual invitation, not just the message) have not been sent!! I have no idea how long this has been the case……quite possibly since it was added as a new feature (years ago). The problem seems to be mainly on the iOS app although a few Android users are experiencing the same issue. You wouldn’t know there is a problem as it states the invitation has been sent but when you check your sent invitations, it does not show and I have confirmed on 4 occasions now that the recipient does not receive anything!! Outrageous!

This is, I believe a direct result of LinkedIns ridiculous feature launch policy that appears to involve zero testing or quality control and relies 100% on the user reporting a problem……but what is the user is unable or highly unlikely to spot the fault?

It’s time that LinkedIn stopped letting their members down and implemented a proper, thorough quality control testing procedure.

Do you agree?

“How do I stop those irritating badge posts from LinkedIn appearing on the left of my screen while I'm working? The ones which talk about how it bases choices it offers me on my interests or posts or some such nonsense. I've only really noticed them this week”

ANSWER This would appear to be an early release of a new notification. It is not possible to stop these types of pop-ups but you can give feedback to LinkedIn that you find them irritating and perhaps they will think twice about rolling it out further.

Welcome to episode 196, this week I chat with personal branding expert Jennifer Holloway about the article that LinkedIn bring out every year highlighting the most used words in LinkedIn profiles.

Click on the image above to view the full article

Takeaways from our chat

Some words (such as passionate) are overused in profiles without much thought going into whether they are true or not A better way to interpret this list is not to avoid the words as such but to demonstrate that you are ‘passionate’ or ‘motivated’ by the way you describe what you do. Let the reader make the conclusion themselves. Storytelling can be a great way to demonstrate qualities without having to directly tell someone you are an ‘expert, ’strategic’ or ‘creative’ Are you using a buzzword because it is one you commonly use or are you just falling into the trap of using it for the sake of it? Jennifers advice on writing a LinkedIn summary; Show credibility with hard facts Explain your personal brand by explaining what drives you and explaining your values Give the reader a ‘relationship hook’ - something about you that reveals your personality and allows for a more personal connection. LinkedIn profile headlines are still the most keyword sensitive part of your profile but only jobseekers need to be highly focused on profile optimisation. Never make personal statements without answering Janet Morans questions ‘So What and Says who?!’ A good technique to use if you are struggling to write your profile summary is to get a friend to write if you - this won’t be what you will use but it can really help to get you started.

Thanks again to Jennifer for her time and ideas. You can find out more about her from her LinkedIn profile (link in image above) or by going to her website https://www.jennifer-holloway.co.uk/

This weeks question comes from Mahan Tavakoli

“Hi Mark, I am a newer listener to your podcast and really enjoying the content and your style. So much so that I have downloaded all available past episodes from ITunes and going through them one at a time. Anyway, I have a question and not sure if you have addressed this before or not. If it fits what you are looking to cover on the Podcast, I would love to hear your thoughts about it. I am writing a series of articles (on leadership and organizational development). Should I first publish them on LinkedIn and then on Medium and put on my blog… or should I publish them elsewhere and post links in LinkedIn or is an all of the above strategy viable? Most of my target audience is on LinkedIn but want to know your thoughts about best approach to a blog posting strategy.”

My advice is that you are probably best posting your content as an article and on your blog at the same time. Your latest Article becomes a part of your profile and has a longer shelf life than a post. You will need to promote your article via engaging and interesting posts - not just ‘have a read of my article’ - try to introduce the subject matter and ask questions to start a conversation. You can refer to the article with a link but the post needs to resonate with people in its own right. Never try to promote your external blog via LinkedIn, it simply won’t work as the algorithm will suppress the distribution of any post containing an external link.